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Invitation from the Department Head

On behalf of the Department of Entomology, I invite you to consider graduate studies at The Pennsylvania State University.

Our department attracts students from many countries, diverse cultural backgrounds, and varied undergraduate educational backgrounds (biological sciences, chemistry, zoology, botany, and meteorology, to name a few).

As you view our Web site for information about Penn State Entomology, what you may find unique about our department is the depth of concentration we have in several key research areas. Unlike many departments where one individual represents a given specialty field, we have at least several faculty members working in each specialty. This provides a very unique experience for our students: multiple faculty members with strong expertise to serve on student thesis committees and a larger network of graduate students sharing common interests. This synergy facilitates a group-learning experience and increases the possibility of participation in research teams. The strength of our research resides in three main program areas: Chemical Ecology, Ecological Applications, and Disease Biology and Ecology.

With the recent hires of internationally known scientists, our strength in Chemical Ecology is unique to any program in the United States. Our Ecological Applications group is excellent with research spanning the theoretical to the applied. What is particularly noteworthy about this core of faculty is their extensive use of modeling to forecast pests and diseases in space and time. We have a very strong research group in Disease Biology and Ecology with research programs focusing on insect pathology and insect immunity. Across all three research areas, students will find faculty who are very collaborative and work well together. In many instances, students take advantage of the depth of faculty research expertise and utilize co-advisers for their graduate studies.

We hope you will consider joining us at Penn State. Please feel free to contact me; our graduate program coordinator, John Tooker; and/or the graduate program assistant, LaTrisha Hough, for further information about our department and the application process.

Gary W. Felton, Ph.D.Professor and Department Head of Entomologygwf10@psu.edu